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The Structures of Scientific Relativism University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Transactions of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences and Affiliated Societies Nebraska Academy of Sciences 1980 The Structures of Scientific Relativism Charles J. Dougherty Creighton University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tnas Part of the Life Sciences Commons Dougherty, Charles J., "The Structures of Scientific Relativism" (1980). Transactions of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences and Affiliated Societies. 291. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tnas/291 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Nebraska Academy of Sciences at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Transactions of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences and Affiliated Societiesy b an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. 1980. Transactions of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences, VIII:211-21S. PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE THE STRICTURES OF SCIENTIFIC RELATIVISM Charles J. Dougherty Department of Philosophy Creighton University Omaha, Nebraska 68178 Few recent works have generated as much intellectual discussion of their world-view. Kuhn introduced the notion as an achieve­ as Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Yet given ment or constellation of achievements so unprecedented as to the impact this book has had on our understanding of science-its role galvanize a group of scientific adherents, and yet so open­ in the demise of logical positivism, in the current outpouring of interest in the history of science, and in changes in science education - perhaps ended as to permit these adherents to accept the task of com­ it is time now, some ten years after Kuhn's provocative Postscript, pleting its promise in painstaking and detailed scientific for still another look at his thesis. That is the purpose of this study. work. The achievements of Isaac Newton formed a paradigm First, those elements of Kuhn's book which committed him to a scienti­ in this sense. As the matrix of views within which the disci­ fic relativism are reconstructed. Secondly, this relativism is critiqued from pline functions, the paradigm provides laws, theories, defini­ several rather different points of view. Finally, the position is defended that Kuhn's view of science is suspect because it generates two para­ tions, symbolic generalizations, mathematical and logical doxes, one self-referential and one existential, and because his analysis tools, techniques, instrumentation, and shared beliefs and is considered inadequate both from a pragmatic and a phenomenologi­ values for its followers. More importantly for Kuhn, the para­ cal perspective. digm presented a concrete example or series of concrete exam­ ples for what counts as legitimate effort in that discipline. t t t This latter sense of the paradigm as shared example also con­ tains the crucial philosophical claim of Kuhn's work: that a I. paradigm defines the world of the scientists who accept it and does so in a fashion which cannot be made fully explicit. By now Kuhn's (1970) central conceptual contribution is well-known. The history of science is a dynamic of paradigm­ Three dramatic consequences are entailed by Kuhn's based normal science, progressively elaborating and confirm­ theory of scientific paradigms. First, there are no facts inde­ ing itself; revolutionary episodes, proliferating a consciousness pendent of a given scientific theory. The paradigm defines a of anomaly and innovative response to anomaly; and the re­ world, not a way of seeing or interpreting the world. For Kuhn establishment of normal science based on consensus around a there was no access to the facts directly. Rather, they are al­ new paradigm. Were this the whole of Kuhn's thesis, his book ways fact-for-a-paradigm; they are always theory-laden facts. would have been philosophically non-controversial. Philoso­ This immediately eliminates the possibility of a correspondence phers, of course, knew that science and scientific theories had theory of truth since there is no reality separate from the developed, and that that development was not without its paradigm's reality against which the paradigm itself could be own peculiar paroxysms. What was (and what remains) philo­ compared. (Indeed, the very notion of paradigm suggests a sophically controversial was Kuhn's understanding of para­ coherence theory of truth.) digm. Secondly, since the paradigm is not capable of being Although paradigm is used throughout Kuhn's book and made explicit, no rules can exhaust the import of a scientific is re-examined critically in his Postscript, it defies easy transla­ tradition. More importantly, since the paradigm cannot be tion into other words. It is what the scientists of a given tradi­ rationally articulated in full, there will always be non-rational tion share, that which makes fruitful communication between elements in any individual's commitment or opposition to any them possible, and that which allows for successful elaboration paradigm. The decision to adopt any given paradigm at any 211 212 C. J. Dougherty given point of its development is more akin to the commit­ The second issue moves in just the opposite direction. As ment of a political revolutionary or to a religious conversion Kuhn's stimulus-to-sensation model completed his relativisll1 than it is to the conclusion of a deductive syllogism. at the micro-level, so his rejection of any God or trans-human natural intelligence completed it at the macro-level. If one is Finally, since each paradigm defines its own world, and tempted to read the cunning of Reason into this dynamic there is no paradigm-independent world available to us, the of scientific development, Kuhn scotched the temptation by historical movement of the scientific community from one an explicit espousal of Darwin's conceptual transposition. paradigm to another is beyond rational appraisal. One can The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, like Origin of Species, speak of progress only internal to a single paradigm; only here "recognizes no goal set either by God or nature" (Kuhn are there standards against which to measure progress, viz. 1970: 172). Since this is not a teleological process, we shali the paradigm itself. Progress here becomes tautological. have to "learn to substitute evolution-from-what-we-do-know Again, since there is no access to the real without a paradigm, for evolution-toward-that-we-wish-to-know" (Kuhn, 1970: there is no way to represent meaningfully trans-paradigm 171). progress. Progress here is empty. Furthermore, since each para­ digm defines its laws, theories, and beliefs in its own terms, The world is now well lost. paradigms are not even comparable. Instead, they are radically incommensurate. II. In more traditional philosophical terms, what Kuhn offered us is a scientific relativism. Scientific "truths" are relative to One of the great ironies in the history of philosophy is a given paradigm. This paradigm is not itself capable of being the paradox of the skeptic who claims to know that we can compared directly with the real. Nor may we assume that know nothing. Unless he makes no positive claim whatsoever, historical development will bring us increasingly more valid or is just plain evasive, his theory refutes itself. A similar paradigms, since no two paradigms may be compared directly. conundrum faces the relativist. If his view is that all truths are Individual scientists and the community of scientists at large relative to some perspective, one may validly counter that this move from one paradigm to another for considerations not is merely the relativists' perspective. If the relativists' rejoinder wholly rational, and where rational, not wholly explicit. If is that truth is relative not only from his perspective but from we accept this position, we shall have to relinquish the notion, every conceivable perspective, he is well on his way to refuting in Kuhn's (1970: 170) own words, that " ... changes of para­ himself by offering a non-relative claim. And to paraphrase digm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer Russell's remark on universals, if you have to admit one non­ and closer to the truth." relative claim, you might as well admit all that you need. Let us apply these general observations to Kuhn's own views. Two more points need to be made to complete our expo­ sition of Kuhn's relativism. The first issue is raised in the It is roughly true to say that, prior to the wide acceptance Postscript. In language which is quite unexpectedly material­ of Kuhn's thesis, the received philosophy of science in the istic, Kuhn offered a finer-grained analysis of the epistemic English-speaking world was that of the Vienna Circle positi­ roots of this relativism. Although we all may receive different vists. At least, it is accurate to say that Kuhn himself saw the sensations from a putatively similar experience, "under pain situation this way. In the "Introduction," for example, Kuhn of solipsism" Kuhn held that we must posit the existence claimed to be rebelling against a theory of science on which and immutability of identical stimuli. Thus, for example, he was himself weaned intellectually. This theory was char­ three different perceptions of an orange by three different acterized by strong separations between scientific fact and perceivers may result in three quite different sensations scientific theory, between sociology and epistemology, and (say that of an orange, a peach, and a grapefruit); yet, to between the context of discovery and the context of justifi­ maintain a minimally common world we must, Kuhn as­ cation. This theory minimized or ignored the role of history, serted, say that three identical sets of orange-stimuli were personal factors, and the non-rational aspects of science in present-even though stimuli are the sorts of things which general in favor of emphasis on the rational methods of science can never, in principle, be known.
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